


Grey Lady

by sibley (ferns)



Category: Ant-Man (Movies)
Genre: Apocalypse, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Spoilers, Dubious Morality, Families of Choice, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), some ant puns
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 10:11:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15216884
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ferns/pseuds/sibley
Summary: Before the world ended, Bill Foster was the only one Ava Starr cared about. After half the population turns to ash, some things change.





	Grey Lady

**Author's Note:**

> I Can't Believe I'm Writing For Marvel, And Especially For Ant-Man Of All Things, the fic.
> 
> The Grey Lady is a ghost that shows up in tons of places from Dunedin, New Zealand to North Dakota, which means it's _probably_ not the same ghost, but whatever.

Bill tells her that he is going to save her, and Ava believes him. She believes him a thousand times over.

He is the only one who comes into her little room in an off-the-grid SHIELD facility and talks to her like she is a person. Bill always says the same things. That he is trying to get her out of here. That he is going to save her. That he loves her. She believes him every time.

He brings her things. Gifts. Not just her teddy bear, which she refuses to let be taken by the people from SHIELD who want to hurt her- _no no no no no put me down!-_ but other things like fresh fruit and experimental things that he says will help her with the pain. The people at SHIELD don’t care about her pain. Bill is the only one who wants to help her. Wants to stop her powers from tearing her apart.

SHIELD wants Ava to be a weapon. Bill wants Ava to have a normal life, as normal as she can. Ava hates SHIELD. Ava loves Bill. It’s simple.

Once, Bill brings her a kitten. He says that he is borrowing it from his neighbor, and for three hours Ava gets to play with it, kissing its little calico ears whenever she can. Bill praises her for how well she is keeping her powers under control so as not to hurt it, and for a few days after he takes the kitten back to its home all she can do was smile.

And then they tell her that Bill is not going to be allowed to see her again. That he has been making her too soft. That she needs to be a weapon. That Ava is the Ghost, _their_ Ghost, and her training is not over yet, and unless they take her only family away from her she will not be able to do any of the things they want her to do.

They tell her that they will let her see Bill again if she completes her training. Ava knows they are lying. They’re never going to let her go. They’re never going to let her see Bill. They’re never going to do anything that _she_ wants them to do, because they only care about her when they know that they can use her. So Ava will use them.

She will train and she will fight and she will steal and kill for them, she’ll be their soldier on the battlefield, even as her constantly shifting atoms and molecules make the pain worse for her every single day. And then when they think they have broken her, when they think they have complete control of her, Ava will slip through their fingers and she will run.

It’s what they trained her to do, after all.

When Bill finds her again, she is close to death, having gone without stabilization for so long that she can’t even push past the pain enough to speak. He builds her a new chamber and she stays in it for a week, crying the minute she is strong enough to push through the walls and crash into his arms. He brushes the small growing strands of hair off her forehead and she closes her eyes and buries her face in his chest and for a moment, a brief shining moment, Ava is okay again.

In the end, Bill is not the one who saves her. Not the one who stops her pain and takes away her powers not quite for good but close enough. The woman out of time does it, gentle and kind and promising that she will help her, and Ava feels that this is not just because she has a daughter of her own, but because she cares about other people. Like Bill cares about her.

But Bill hugs her and they stumble out of the alley together and they find a car and they run. Bill turns on some pop music because he has bad taste but Ava can’t even care because even as they are speeding away from the scene of their crime, another fast car in a horde of them, she is solid and free and she can breathe again.

“I forgot what it was like,” she gasps, breathless and with her heart in her ears, “not to feel pain. I forgot what it was like not to be hurting all the time.”

“And what does it feel like?” Bill swerves to avoid a cyclist hurtling at breakneck speeds while trying to get in front of them.

Ava sticks her head out the window and _screams_ in response, loud enough that it makes her throat hurt. She pulls herself back in and starts crying, loud and ugly sobs that shake her whole body. She feels good. She feels free. She feels alive.

It’s a week before half the world turns to ash.

Ava and Bill cling to each other when the news comes (what names are they using at this hotel? Maisie and Perry?), too afraid that if they let go, the other will start dissolving before their very eyes. But they don’t. They survive. Just like they always do.

The girl finds them, not the other way around. She’s tiny. Gripping a little stick as a weapon. She says she lost all of her parents the day the world ended, or at least she thinks she did, because she can’t find most of them. She says her name is Cassie, and she knows Ava and Bill because her daddy told her about them. So she found them.

They wouldn’t believe her if she didn’t have a giant ant by her side, who she says is named Antonietta.

Bill likes her. Ava thinks she’s kind of cute. In a little sister sort of way. And Ava knows painfully well what it’s like to lose your parents, to not know what to do without them because sometimes you’re just so sure they’re coming back that it feels like it’s going to choke you but then they _don’t,_ which means she can’t kick out someone feeling the same way. Especially not with the world the way it is. So she stays. For now.

She steals stuff to survive, sometimes. Not often. And only if it’s from a big store. There are lots of looters now. Lots of people stealing to survive. Bill says that they need to watch out for Cassie, and Cassie says they need to watch out for Antonietta, and Ava thinks she might just need to watch out for all of them. Bill’s been protecting her for years. It’s only fair she do the same, right?

It’s the end of the world. Everything matters. It’s only fair that she use the training SHIELD gave her to keep her little family alive. The father who was there for her not always when she needed him but whenever he possibly could, and the little girl who is insisting that Ant-Man is her daddy so she can take care of herself even as she gets carsick from the potholes in the road that nobody is there to fill.

Bill is the one who hears on a broken radio that the Avengers are back, that they’re trying to fix things, that they’re promising that they’re going to do everything in their power to get all the missing _(dead)_ people back. Ava doesn’t believe them, but Cassie does, and she hugs onto Bill’s legs and says solemnly that they’re going to get both her daddies and her mommy and Hope and Uncle Luis back.

Ava doesn’t believe that. But she’s hurt enough people for a lifetime. More than enough. If this is what it takes to make amends, she’ll do it. SHIELD didn’t train her to help people, they trained her to hurt them. They said it was for the ‘greater good’, but Ava always knew better. Wouldn’t it be one last _fuck you_ to them to use what they taught her to do to not only escape them, but to help the people SHIELD never cared about? The civilians just trying to survive the apocalypse after losing half the people they loved?

When Ava was little, Bill taught her that it is better to save others that yourself. Ava grew out of that idea quickly. SHIELD taught her that the only person she could ever keep safe was herself, without even meaning to. But… Some of Bill’s lessons remain. Some of the little girl who tried to be with her father when he was dying and accidentally killed her mother remains inside of her.

She looks down at Cassie. “Do you want to save the world?”

Cassie beams up at her, grabbing onto her hand and squeezing it tightly. Ava will never be used to that. Never be used to being able to touch people again _every_ time they touch her, not just randomly when her powers feel like it, when her focus is enough. Feel them when they hold her hand or hug her or hit her. Solemnly, Cassie says, “Yes, because I’m going to be an Avenger when I grow up.”

“I'm sure you will be,” Ava replies, squeezing back. She actually does believe it. Ava looks at New York City’s skyline in the distance. Their destination. Where the Avengers are supposed to be. She looks at Bill, who’s leaning against the car to alleviate some of the stress on his bad back while staying as far away from Antonietta as he can. “Well, come on then. The Avengers could use all the help they can get.”

The Ghost of SHIELD was always an assassin. She was never a hero.

But Ava Starr could be.


End file.
